Talk about your quality programming. Did I watch this show 25 years ago when it was first run? Noooo …. I generally “discover” an artist, movie or show long after it’s prime. Heat of the Night so clearly stands in contrast to today’s programming. KDMI Channel 19 in central Iowa plays 4 episodes straight on Sunday evening. One of tonight’s episodes, ‘Hello in There’, was a prime example of why it was such good TV.

Chief Gillespie (Carroll O’Connor) goes out to question the deceased’s grandfather Winston Tyler (played by Whitman Mayo, ‘Grady’ from Sanford and Son). They took nearly 5 minutes for a very nice scene with the Chief and Tyler. A couple of old actors who really knew their craft, and a director who was willing to spend a little time to impart something modern shows know little about- humanity.

As Mayo’s character is talking to O’Connor, you can see the emotions slowly come across his face as he turns away. The director does these nice tight close-up’s, and has the actors go slow and low-key, and ends up doing ‘more with less’.

In a way I would think this was O’Connor’s crown jewel of his career. The acting, scripts and production were so outstanding. At first I was going to say that All in the Family was more socially consequential, and it would have to be for the most part I suppose. But Heat was so immensely important for it’s exemplary diversity in casting. Few shows before or since did what it did to have women and minorities portrayed in healthy and realistic ways. Carroll O’Connor broke new ground in both his series.

The thing that set Heat apart was that the characters were the story, not the crime (it was ostensibly a police show after all). In today’s hyper sophisticated and technical crime shows, it is all about the wow! The forensic side of the crime. That’s great if you are a criminal justice major, not so much for a viewer.

That’s a lot of it I think. It wasn’t so much about how gruesome a crime the writers could come up with. It wasn’t about how good the hero was at shooting or fighting. It was about the storytelling and the human drama.

Carroll O’Connor was good and brought good people with him and made good people better. Shoot, the series had 30 directors. These are the directors that did more than 10 shows each: Harry Harris, Russ Mayberry, Vincent McEveety and Winrich Kolbe. So whatever it was that made this show great, it worked.

The other thing  a viewer noticed aside from close-ups, was the audio. (And from a ‘gunners’ perspective, I loved the way they had the criminal and the good guy go to the rifle so often as the weapon of choice. The rifle in reality is so much more powerful a weapon than the handgun. Except for when the Chief was shooting of course, he was ‘one shot’ Bill! I suppose for the modern pretty boy, it’s much more ‘sexy’ to have them dancing around with a pistol.) They don’t make TV like that no more.